One Year Hair Anniversary!! (Tips That Helped Me)

I finally made it!! One year into my hair journey!!

Disclaimer: This post is coming four days earlier than my actual one year date. I will most likely not have the time to post this on the actual day. Since my growth from today until August 17th with not be that tremendous, I am not worried that this blog is a few days early lol

Let me start this off by saying that I will not be discussing everything. This will not be a blog giving you my entire hair story from birth lol I'm just simply here to give a broad overview of my thoughts of my first year of me EVER fully taking care of my hair. This blog has been a long time coming (1 year....365 days....8,765 hours...525,600 minutes...you get the point) I have been waiting for this day since the start of my hair journey. Now that it's here, I am both excited and thirsty for more to come.

To begin, I'm just going to give a brief overview of my hair story. To get the full details, you can read about it here. I began styling my own hair roughly three or so years prior to starting my hair journey. Before then, other individuals were taking care of my hair whether it was my mother or a hair stylist. Therefore, once I decided to quit going to the stylists because of financial reasons, I had no clue what to do with my hair. All that I knew was that I had a shampoo, conditioner, blowdryer and a flat iron at home. That's all I needed right? Because I was still hanging on to the sleek, straight hair that I would get at a hair salon, I applied a lot of heat to my hair to make sure that I received the same results. Consequently, my hair started to break off. Although I did self-relax, I knew that the relaxer wasn't causing the problem. After three years of damaging my hair and breaking it off to shoulder length, I found the wonderful youtuber ULoveMegz who introduced me to the world of healthy, relaxed hair. She posted a video about sites one can go to in order to grow there hair. From there, I found Hairlista and the rest is history.

During the beginning of my hair journey

Now, I'm not going to lie and say that this past year has been a breeze. But I will say that I haven't had any major bumps in the road, so to speak. Aside from minor breakage here and there, I haven't had any real setbacks. Yet, I've still learned so much about my hair, especially now that I am transitioning. Although I began my journey looking for length, I began to appreciate my hair for what it was and decided that health is most important. Though I still have those days where I may wish that my hair would hang a certain way or do a certain thing, I still enjoy what my hair is able to do. No, my hair isn't down my back, but it is so much more thicker and healthier than ever before.

Tip #1: Accept your imperfections!!  

In order to get your hair to its maximum potential, you must first enjoy it as it is right now. By constantly nagging about the little things and hating your hair, the way you decide to take care of it will be vastly affected. If you learn to say, "My hair may not be perfect, but I still love it!" You're telling your hair that you accept it for what it can do and you're willing to work with it to help it get better.

Tip #2: Listen to your hair.

 Yes, I said listen lol Trust me your hair does communicate with you in its own special way. For example, if you shampooed your hair with a shampoo that caused it to knot up and tangle, your hair is telling you that it doesn't like that shampoo. If your hair doesn't like that shampoo, you shouldn't use it. Little things like that can measure how successful you are in your journey. Pay attention to how your hair reacts to certain products and techniques that you use. And most importantly, learn how to give your hair a break once in a while (aka Protective Styling).

Tip #3: Don't Be a Follower

We all had those moments when we tried every technique under the sun. We search the internet and see that someone did a certain technique for months on end and we decide to try it because that woman's hair is super long. Guess what? That technique might not work for you. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, you might not even need to do that technique. So if your scalp isn't dry often, then you don't need to oil your scalp everyday. If your hair is not excessively shedding or breaking, you don't have to do Black Tea Rinses or Molasses Treatments. DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU!! By incorporating too many things, you cause your hair stress which leads to breakage and shedding (i.e. UNWANTED DAMAGE)

Tip #4: Keep it Simple!!

This is a tip that I CANNOT stress enough. It follows up with all of the previous tips, making it THE MOST IMPORTANT. Don't incorporate 1200 different techniques into your regimen, only do what works and what your hair tells you to do. At the beginning of my journey, I bought so many products and tried all of these different techniques just because I was advised to do it or I saw other women doing it. As I progressed in my journey, I realized that 90% of what I was doing was really unnecessary. I slowly began to cut out different things and now my regimen is perfect. I only do three things: wash/co-wash, deep condition and moisturize and seal. (Styling is a given.) That's it!! It's the most basic regimen, but yet it provides the BEST results. If you keep it simple, I guarantee that you will get your hair to its maximum potential. 

Part 2 of this tip is to focus on the health of your hair. Healthy hair guarantees your maximum length. Keep in my mind that we all have different levels of length potential. Ask yourself: Is it better to have short, thick, healthy hair or long, stringy and damaged hair?

All of these four, but very important, tips got me to get my hair from this...

...to this.